A Kim Jong-Il Production

by Paul Fischer

  She was taken to museums, too. The Great Leader loved museums. He had so many built that North Korea even has a Museum of the Construction of the Museum of the Construction of the Metro. Most of them were in Pyongyang, like the Korean Art Museum, which consists exclusively of paintings of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il, but at the time several were being built in other provinces, like the Sinchon Museum of American War Atrocities, full of “historically accurate” painted portrayals of the U.S. Army’s brutality during the 1950–53 war: shooting children in the head, loosing wild dogs to feed on innocent peasants, skinning men alive, burning them on bonfires, scalping them with bone saws, nailing capitalist propaganda through their foreheads. The Americans are all depicted with pale skin, long noses, and demonic, wild-eyed glee. There are, of course, no photographs anywhere in the museum. Choi was taken to the Korean Revolution Museum, dedicated to Kim Il-Sung’s forebears, and the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum, where she was told the North Koreans had won what they called the Liberation War and shown pictures of U.S. Army vehicles surrendering, white flags held out their windows (these were, in fact, taken at the first armistice talks in Kaesong, when the UN command had been convinced by the North Koreans to arrive with the flags as a sign of peace). The museum downplayed North Korean casualties, exaggerated those of the enemy, and omitted the involvement of the Chinese and Soviets in the conflict. Later in the year Choi was taken to Kim Jong-Il’s brand new International Friendship Exhibition Museum, which he had opened in August and which the Central News Agency boasted had been built in only three days. Made of nuclear-blast-resistant lead-lined concrete, the museum housed gifts presented to Kim Il-Sung by foreign dignitaries, “proof,” the regime said, “of the world’s endless love and respect toward the Great Leader.” Highlights included a bulletproof limousine sent by Joseph Stalin, an armored train car from Mao, and a stuffed crocodile waiter, holding teacups on a tray, donated by Communists in Nicaragua. Soldiers with silver-plated machine guns searched guests at the door, and all visitors had to bow to the portrait of Kim Il-Sung at the entrance and then slip disposable shoe covers over their footwear so as not to tarnish the floors.

  * * *

  Choi’s education, as it was called, continued with her attendant. Hak-Sun never stopped talking about the Great Leader and his achievements. Every day she urged Choi to join her at the piano and learn songs praising Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il. Soon men came to ask her to make a propaganda radio broadcast stating she had come to the North voluntarily to “place [herself] under the care of the Great Leader,” but she refused. They never pushed too hard, and their instructions seemed to be to win Choi over rather than bully her. One day, the man who had asked for Choi’s passport and identity card when she first arrived returned and moved into the guesthouse. His name was Mr. Kang, from the Investigations Department of the State Security Department. He told her he had been assigned to her as her instructor. From that point on Kang managed Choi’s everyday activity and oversaw her ideological reeducation. Choi was given a three-volume biography of Kim Il-Sung and asked to read it aloud. She found herself stumbling on the strange vocabulary and the long, sycophantic sentences.

  “Try to read better,” Kang said.

  “Can’t I just read it to myself?”

  “No. Read it aloud.”

  For two hours a day, every day, she slogged through the book. Regularly Kang asked her to memorize passages and recite them back, word for word. Her progress was so slow and the books so thick and fulsome it took two months to get to the end of the third volume. “Every chapter idolized Kim Il-Sung and his ancestors,” Choi remembered. His father was “courageous and patriotic,” the book said, his mother “worked for the army fighting for national independence … [living] her life for her son and the national struggle,” and Kim Il-Sung himself was like a benevolent sun, shining on all of Korea. Choi found the whole thing absurd. She didn’t know yet that every child in North Korea read the same book at school, memorized even longer passages, and was told every word was undisputed fact.

  In addition to history (the lives and exploits of Kim Il-Sung), economic theory (the economic policies of Kim Il-Sung), and culture (great songs and tales of Kim Il-Sung, produced by Kim Jong-Il), Choi was also instructed in the Great Leader’s “groundbreaking” philosophy, known as juche. Juche, which can be translated as “self-reliance,” took basic Marxist ideas about the conflict between wealthy landlord and working proletariat and added a strong element of nationalism. According to juche, after the People had taken control of the modes of production, they were in charge of their own fate, and their power in determining that fate lay in subsuming their individual needs to the will of the collective. The collective was led and represented by an absolute, supreme Great Leader, who must not be questioned, and had been sent to lead the Korean people because they were a special, chosen people, purer blooded and more virtuous than any other, a further reason why they must go forth into enlightenment without the help of other, lesser races.

  Or something like that. Juche was a famously confusing, contradictory doctrine, one that North Korea watchers and analysts have tried to make sense of for forty years without being able to agree on what, exactly, it means. Choi Eun-Hee couldn’t find any logic in it either. Often she found herself arguing with Kang. “The Communists insist that in this nation everyone is equal and lives happily,” she told him one day. “But in my opinion the class system is even stricter here. What do you think?”

  “This is the transitional period,” Kang replied, in a loud, self-aware voice, as if he were reciting a memo. “Before one can reach the ideal Communist society, one must pass through this transition.”

  “Then what is the difference between capitalism and present-day socialism?” Choi asked innocently.

  Kang looked flustered. “What are you trying to say? How can you possibly compare socialism to capitalism, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer—a system based completely on the survival of the fittest?”

  “But the welfare of society is also a capitalistic goal.”

  “Nonsense. There is a difference, an essential difference.”

  “What is the difference? Can you explain the difference more clearly?”

  “If I say it’s different, it’s different!” Kang shouted. “Why do you ask so many questions?”

  Every conversation went like this: brought to a premature end by the evasive promise that if she only stopped thinking for herself and simply embraced the revolution, all would be well. Every now and then the instructor would suddenly ask, “Madame Choi, you have many acquaintances in high places in South Korea, don’t you? They say you were very close to the head of the KCIA, Kim Jong-Pil. Is it possible that Kim Jong-Pil could be the next president?” or “What does President Park think of so-and-so?” Choi knew they were trying to extract information from her, so she told Kang he overestimated her. “I’ve been stuck out in the country running my school in Anyang,” she said. The man just laughed and, on another day, started asking again.

  Choi had a question of her own: Why had she been kidnapped? “When we carry out the revolution in South Korea under the leadership of the Great Leader,” Kang answered, “on that day you will have an important role to play. The South Koreans think of us as monsters and savages. So after liberating South Korea, no matter how we try to explain our ideology to them, do you think they will accept it? But if you stand in the forefront and tell the South Korean people—and just say a single word—it will be more persuasive than a hundred words from us.” The idea seemed absurd to her, but over the weeks Kang kept bringing it up.

  “I can’t stand the idea that my family may be suffering and thinking I’m dead,” Choi told him one day. “Without me they may starve to death.”

  “Starve?” He shrugged. “No matter how bad things get, people find a way to survive.” Besides, he said, if she was so worried she just had to agree to the broadcast and they would know she was alive.

  “What, tel
l the world I’m happily living here under the care of the Great Leader and all that crap?”

  “Calm down. You must bear some pain for the good of the revolution.”

  “What the hell is this revolution?” she snapped.

  Kang held her glare. “You need to study in a more revolutionary manner in order to understand it. We need to have a revolution in order to reunify the country. Only after reunification can you be reunited with your family and relatives. Please try to endure it until then.”

  On another occasion Choi received a lesson in which she was told Park Chung-Hee and his wife were American spies, that the First Lady had been hated in the South and her killing celebrated by the people. “I knew the First Lady,” Choi interrupted angrily. “She was a wonderful, generous person. What proof do you have for this nonsense?” She insisted on proof until the instructor shouted at her and left. Every time she challenged Kang she was disinvited, like a grounded child, from the next weekly party.

  She watched movies, too, of course, starting with Sea of Blood. Kim Jong-Il watched it with her, and when it was finished he asked her for a critique. She told him the story was exciting and the performances genuine. He grinned happily when she told him the film was on a scale impossible to replicate at that time in South Korea. He seemed less happy when she suggested that North Korean works seemed to her repetitive, as they were all about duty, commitment, and self-sacrifice.

  “It seems to me,” she added, “that in the final analysis, revolution aims to enable the people to live well, doesn’t it? There are a lot of other themes that can make people feel happiness.”

  Jong-Il blinked dubiously. “Such as?”

  “Well, love, for example. The love shared by a man and a woman.” Jong-Il still looked unconvinced. Surely, Choi suggested, The Forty-First was such a powerful film not just because of the political message, but because the characters at the heart of the story were in love? Isn’t every story better with a love interest?

  Jong-Il thought about that for a while, then gave a little shrug.

  “When Director Shin gets here, we can figure it out.”

  Choi went numb. It was the very last thing she had expected to hear.

  “What? What do you mean? What for? How?”

  “He visited just a few days ago,” Jong-Il said.

  Surely that couldn’t be true, Choi thought, it was nonsense—but then, could anyone lie that well? Seeing her hesitate, Kim turned to his bodyguards. “Comrades, didn’t Director Shin promise to return after his last visit?” That was a bet too far—the men looked confused and embarrassed. “Yes,” they mumbled after a second.

  “See?” Jong-Il said to her before changing the subject. “You know, when we have a North–South Korean press conference, you must participate…”

  Much to Choi’s surprise—and to the surprise of his entourage—Kim had decided to make her his cultural adviser of sorts. He took her to the theater to see musicals he had commissioned, to the opera, the circus, and to his movie theater. For a man whose national philosophy was based on self-reliance and on the North Korean race’s alleged superiority, Jong-Il seemed desperate for his guest’s approval; in fact, everyone in North Korea, Choi noticed, seemed desperate for an outsider’s approval. They boasted endlessly of everything’s size and scope. “How about this theater!” Jong-Il asked Choi the first time she entered Pyongyang’s main stage, the Mansudae Art Theater. “In terms of size and facilities, it’s really world class, isn’t it? And it was built in just one year.” When he took her to the circus, he welcomed her by saying, “This is a special show for your benefit. Our troupe always wins prizes at international contests in Eastern Europe.”

  Choi became the only person to whom Kim Jong-Il would genuinely listen and whose opinions he sought, the only person allowed to criticize the Immortal Classics he was conceiving. She didn’t hold back. They developed an odd bond, the younger man alternatively looking up to and talking down to her, she growing to like and even enjoy his company even as she cursed and loathed him for abducting her from her children and life. He took to occasionally calling her Teacher Choi, in the traditional formal Korean manner, especially when asking for her advice. He seemed at ease with her and could speak more openly than he allowed himself with his compatriots, but Choi was also keenly aware that she had never once been alone with him, that there were always bodyguards and underlings quietly standing by, waiting in the shadows.

  13

  Taken

  After interviewing him, the Hong Kong police officers took Shin Sang-Ok to the Hilton Hotel, where he had booked a room. Earlier in the day a young British officer had listened patiently as Shin told him his theory of how his ex-wife had been taken by DPRK agents somehow connected to Mrs. Lee’s North Korean husband. When North Korean Vice Premier Pak Song-Chol had visited Seoul during rare talks between North and South in 1972, he had requested a copy of The Houseguest and My Mother to bring back to Kim Il-Sung; Shin said he thought that might have something to do with all this. When he was done the officer thanked him, told him he would be in touch, and asked him to remain in Hong Kong until the investigation was concluded.

  Shin sat in his hotel room, picked up the phone, and called his brother back home in Seoul. His brother told him the whole family was in “chaos.” Shin’s house had been searched, and the police and the press were suggesting he might have done harm to Choi, either out of desperate revenge for her leaving him or, somehow, given his ongoing financial difficulties, for monetary gain. Feeling cornered, Shin called a press conference that evening in his hotel room and repeated his theory about North Korean involvement to the dozen journalists who showed up. He had always mistrusted Mrs. Lee, he said, and added that he thought he might be at the center of a political conspiracy. The reporters had plenty of questions, but almost all of them were about his own alleged involvement in Choi’s disappearance. He was getting nowhere.

  After an uneasy night’s sleep he headed to the Korean consulate and met with an intelligence officer and two policemen, to whom he repeated his story. The intelligence officer asked to see Shin’s passport and authorization to travel, after which he recommended Shin return to Seoul and cooperate with the South Korean police’s investigation. Shin told him he gladly would, on the condition that he be granted an exit visa in advance. He was unable to work at home, he explained, and needed the guarantee that he would still be able to travel and seek a new place of work. The intelligence officer answered he could guarantee no such thing. When Shin left the consulate, he noticed that the two police officials were following him. That evening, the Hong Kong police ordered him not to leave his hotel room. Officers took shifts guarding his door overnight.

  * * *

  It wasn’t unusual for South Koreans of the day to mistrust their own authorities, an attitude borne from decades of civil injustice and exacerbated by recent political repression. Shin, from personal experience, felt this suspicion even more keenly than most. When the middle-aged Englishman knocked at his hotel room door and introduced himself as a detective of the Criminal Investigations Department, Shin knew immediately the direction in which his morning was heading.

  “You’re here to formally interrogate me as a suspect, aren’t you?” he asked the Englishman.

  “I am.”

  Shin let him in and they sat. “You are behind the disappearance of Choi Eun-Hee, aren’t you?” the Englishman asked. He spoke in enunciated, concise single sentences, as if used to interlocutors who didn’t understand much English.

  “No,” replied Shin.

  “You have hidden Choi Eun-Hee and Lee Sang-Hee somewhere, haven’t you? We searched Lee Sang-Hee’s apartment in North Point and found the script for your movie Hell Ship. You planned everything with her, did you not?”

  “No, it’s not true.”

  “Then what was your script doing in her apartment?” the detective asked.

  “I don’t know,” Shin said. “She was always dropping in to our office. Maybe my manager, K
im Kyu-Hwa, lent it to her. Let me speak with Kim Kyu-Hwa and we’ll get to the bottom of this whole thing.”

  This policeman seemed determined to actually get some answers, Shin observed with relief. He had Kim, along with a Japanese interpreter, brought to Shin’s room by a police officer. “We don’t have Korean-speaking staff on hand, so you,” the detective told Shin, “speak through him”—he pointed to the interpreter—“in Japanese. Mr. Kim will also answer in Japanese, and the answer will be translated into English for us. I don’t want either of you saying anything to the other in Korean. Understood?”

  Shin nodded. He looked at his manager, Kim. “How are you involved in this?” he asked bluntly. The more he thought about it, the more he felt Kim was holding something back. When Kim didn’t answer, Shin asked, “Who invited Eun-Hee to Hong Kong?”

  “The Kum Chang Corporation,” Kim answered in Japanese.

  “I’ve never heard of a company by that name.”

  “It’s a small company.” Each of them stopped in turn so the interpreter could repeat every sentence in English.

  “How much did they pay you to make the introduction?” Shin continued when the interpreter had finished.

  “Not much,” Kim said in his native tongue, looking away.

  “No Korean,” the interpreter jumped in.

  “How much?” Shin repeated.

  “I received a few thousand dollars,” Kim answered in Japanese.

  Son of a bitch, Shin thought. “Who wanted you to send an invitation to Eun-Hee?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Kim answered, “it was Mrs. Lee.”

  Shin grew furious and shouted at Kim. The conversation descended into chaos as the two men raised their voices, yelling back and forth in a quick fire of question and answer, the interpreter struggling to keep up, the policemen unable to stop them.

  “Where have they taken her?” Shin snapped. Kim didn’t answer. Shin stepped toward him. “She was kidnapped to North Korea, wasn’t she!”